In an electronic musical instrument designed to generate musical tones belonging to the selected one of many different types of musical instruments, this invention relates to a system for enabling a player by operating a key only once to produce a sample tone associated with that type of musical instrument which is specified by one of a plurality of selection switches.
Some electronic musical instruments like an electronic organ or synthesizer are the type which is designed to generate by itself musical tones associated with that type of musical instruments such as cembalo, piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, etc. which is specified by a selection switch. With an electronic musical instrument which is designed to produce tones approximating those of natural musical instruments and represent a small number of types thereof, a player can remember musical tones peculiar to said natural musical instrument and play a piece by musical tones belonging to the selected one of said few types. Such a small scale electronic musical instrument can freely create a tone color desired by a player by operation of any of particularly provided switches such as the draw bar, tablet, etc.
In contrast, a large scale electronic musical instrument produces not only tones approximating those of natural musical instruments, but also tones of many other types of musical instruments by operation of a key switch for selecting any desired type of musical instrument. With such a large scale electronic musical instrument which generates many tones having a tone color peculiar thereto, a player has to select a desired type of musical instrument before playing a piece. If, in this case, the player has to ascertain that type of musical instrument which he desires to play by listening to sample tones produced by successively depressing some performance keys by himself for trial, then the selecting operation will be very much troublesome.